Mailart 365 has moved

Thanks for visiting Mailart 365. This site is an archive of mailart produced by artists doing mailart 365 from December 2010 to August 2016. As of July 2016, we moved to a new and more modern site at www.mailart365.com. Come on over and check us out there

It is already December 1, 2010 in Greece and mail pick-up will be in about 8 hours. The first mail art 1/365 is in the mailbox and of course, it is being sent to Andy! Best of success, Andy, with this great project!

Ah Jeez, I'm realising now that all my posts will say that they were posted at another time. Australia's time is 11 hours ahead of the UK and 14-17 ahead of the US. I don't know what timezone this blog is keeping to but, I just didn"t want anyone to think I was cheating. It's a beautiful rainy morning here on Dec 1 in Sydney.

Thanks to an amazing thunderstorm, I awoke early this morning, ate a bowl of cereal then cut up the box and made mailart #1/365! Now I'm going to go out and post it to who else.....Andy. Have a great first day everyone!!

I woke up this morning uncertain whether it was November 30 or December 1. When I realized it was the former, I decided to clean the kitchen, including stove and refrigerator. It's pretty much now or never.

I started my mailart blog to document my daily mailart, all of which contained snippets or pages from the book I had published in 2003. Changes since then have made many parts of the book inaccurate, so I wanted to find a good use for it. You can hop over for a look.

I use a lot of fiber and textiles. Also, I post all of the mailart I receive.

I'm confident about the first 250 days but have a feeling the ones after that are going to be -- not a chore, but work. And I love the rhythm of daily work. And I have no theme. So far. But tomorrow is another day. Meet you in the stratosphere then.

This is my art room, which is one corner of a room that my significant other and I share. He has an office of sorts on the other side. At the moment, my corner is a mess, so I got up early this morning and started to clean. I do this about 4 times a year, and it usually stays pretty organized for a month or so, and then things get out of control.

All the stuff in the photo on the right was crowding my little black chair. It is about a year's worth of ephemera I need to sort into categories and/or colors. I do enjoy doing this, but I tend to get distracted by bits of paper and decide I need to use it that very minute, so I rarely ever finish sorting it all. This morning is different.

I have sorted all of it. Every last bit. And though the photo to the left looks like chaos, it makes sense to me. I have labeled storage in my art room for every bit of this ephemera. Well, actually, I don't. I have a pile of stuff that I know I won't use and I will just put in a bag and probably eventually throw away. I just can't throw it away at the moment because something might be useful. This way lies madness.

And my next project, after putting all the sorted chaos away, is to tackle my desk. It gets like this all the time, but only takes me a few minutes to clean up. I need to focus on keeping the desk clean because it will be impossible to do a handmade card every day if the desk looks like this.

Tomorrow card 1/365 will leave my house. And I am looking forward to creating one handmade card every day for the next year, and documenting here, and in a small journal that I will keep throughout the process. This will be fun! Thank you, Andy!

A few of the members of this group have "known" me for awhile via IUOMA, but some of you have never met me. Plus, I told Andy that I'd tell him something about my background at some point. As I've mentioned, I've been making Mail Art for a number of years, leading workshops on making Mail Art, introducing my University students to M.A. and presenting talks about Mail Art. I taught in the Art Foundation program of a major university for many years as an adjunct, first for 11 years, then for another 7 years. The break was to get another degree and work in another field where I could make more money (the kids were getting older, college costs loomed ahead of us.) When I returned to teaching, I didn't want to go back to being a painter, no more pigment for me, no more big abstract expressionist paintings, nope! Done, over that! My studio is small now, so small work is perfect for me, and what better small work than Mail Art. What did I teach at University? I taught basic 2 and 3 d design, color theory, drawing, and general creative studio classes. Over time, I developed a color course that included Albers Interaction of Color, and some history of dyes and pigments. I call this course Color Journey and teach it at our fine arts museum studio school. I love teaching adult students. I don't need to do grading, which I hated, and I get to share what I know with people eager to learn. No kidding, this is good! On a personal note, my husband is an artist. He taught for many years at university in graphic design and illustration. Now he's retired and makes art full-time. This Friday, he has an exhibit opening of his new works with clay. Our daughter trained as a fine art photographer but works in video now (though her day job is as a digital media stategist.) Her most recent documentary is on the Mermaids of New York. Our son is a graphic designer. He's also the skull-a-day guy, which some of you may know. What else, hmmm, well, I read a lot, always have, I knit, I have an Etsy shop, I put my photos on Flickr, I have a blogger blog and a wordpress blog (recipes) and I love writing letters. I'm a member of the Richmond Peace Education Center, I'm a volunteer with Books For Soldiers.
Okay, more information than you ever wanted! Let the Mail Art roll!

I am very excited to be a part of this. I have never blogged before. I started doing Mail Art this month. I got a list together of friends that are interested and gave it to each of them. Its a small network so I also find people online. I don't usually use just one medium, I use many things to achieve my finished product.These are postcards I recently sent. They have all been received.

Greetings to all you fellow mail-artists. I thought I'd take a moment to introduce myself before the storm of activity that is sure to take place after our official start date, and to offer a few words of advice from the perspective of someone who has been doing Mailart 365 for more than half a year.

My name is Kiera Pannell (that is my real name - no nom de plume for me) and I started my own daily mail art project about seven months ago as a way to force myself to maintain my art practice. At the time I was working as a high school math teacher in the wilds of Reading, England, and I was struggling to balance my artistic aspirations with the demands of my job. At the beginning, I didn't set up any rules for myself except that I needed to work on art every day, and mail something (not necessarily the same piece) every day.

At first, I wasn't sure who to mail my work to - the act of mailing it was more about forcing myself not to be precious about what I was creating. I wanted to have a cycle of creating images and giving them to an audience - in essence letting go of any feelings of ownership that I had over them. So, for the first month or so I mailed images to people/institutions that I admired. (This required a fair amount of detective work in finding their addresses) The self-portrait pictured above was mailed to Roger Ebert, I sent a series of images to the cartoonist James Sturm, and even mailed a portrait of Neils Bohr to the physicist/actor/teacher Rupinder Brar.

Over time, I came up with all manners of routines and time-saving devices, because beyond the creation stage, documenting and publicizing my mail art could easily have taken over my entire life.

Survival Tips

Keep a mail art calendar. I plan out in advance who I will mail work to and on which days. This means that when someone sends me mailart, I automatically enter their address into the next free spot on the calender, assuring that I will send them something in return. This keeps people from falling through the cracks (mostly) and it also means that if I go off searching for mail art addresses on the net, I have a place to save them.

Keep a physical address book. This is more for when I meet people in the flesh, and they are interested in taking part in an exchange. It saves me from multiple random tiny pieces of paper with addresses on them. This was especially helpful when I was travelling, as I collected addresses from all of the people that I met.

Have a mail art travel kit. This allows me to create mail art on the go, whether I be sitting on a train or in a particularly boring meeting. My travel kit consists of an enveloppe of images (I like to draw from a source), an enveloppe of paper and cardboard pre-cut to postcard size for drawing on, and a pencil case filled with pens/markers/pencils. The important thing about my travel kit is that it is light-weight, and literally goes everywhere with me. During the England vs. Algeria FIFA world cup game (stalemate = boring) I broke out some cardstock and started drawing because nothing was happening on the pitch. It's like what the boy scouts say - be prepared.

Find up-to-date addresses. In this regard, I have come to avoid mail-art.de. They don't have a system that allows people to delete old listings and replace them with new ones, so a good proportion of their addresses are out of date. The IUOMA is a great location to find other mail artists, and get their addresses (as many of you will well know). In addition, if you participate in mail art callouts that promise documentation to all participants, after the callout is completed, you will get a list of all the artists who participated as well as their addresses. Finally, many mail art webisites (like the one run by my friend Ross Priddle) will publish the addresses of people who have submitted mail.

Be like Ford - create an assembly line. When it comes to documenting my work, I do everything in stages. There is no point in me scanning one image a day - it's a waste of my time. Rather, if I'm going to scan images I wait until I have a bunch that I can do all at once. The same goes for resizing images, preparing mail-outs, writing posts or anything else that relates to my mail art that is not the production stage.

Create a surplus of images. This is useful for a number of reasons. I like being able to pick the perfect image for each person that I send something to, so it's nice to have a wide variety to pick from. Having a surplus of images also gives you some wiggle room for the days when you get sick, or have too much on your plate, or are feeling uninspired. Even if you can continue to create mail-art while nursing a terrible head cold, odds are you won't be up to scanning and documenting it as well.

Create a digital and physical organization system. I've been at this for seven months, and have now created in excess of 250 pieces of mail art. To keep track of them all, I have created a filing system with redundancies, to save me if I happen to lose track of an image. When I scan each image, I create two copies - one which is full size, and gets filed by subject matter, and one which is the exact size necessary for my blog postings (this small step saves so much time! No fiddling with re-sizing images in posts!) which gets filed in a folder for images that have not been mailed yet. When I do mail a piece, that second image gets moved to a third folder for sent images that is organized by the month in which I mailed them. I have a similar physical two-prong filing system for images prior to mailing them off.

Have a support system. Seriously. This is a major commitment that you are taking on, and there will be moments where you have no energy reserves left, and it all seems overwhelming. That's when you need your friends - not your mail art buddies, but the people who will take you out for a beer (or tea, or coffee) and listen to you gripe about how this has taken over your life.

I hope that you find my few words of advice helpful. If you're interested in seeing more of my work, feel free to take a gander at my website, www.thisisart.ca. Happy mailing.

Great to see so many mailartists here already :) By way of an intro, I'm Lplatebigcheese, one of your fellow contributors to this inspired project by andytgeezer.

There is a theme connecting all the art which I'll create and send out, but it's going to be kept secret until the project's under way. Although the title of me blog for the year "questioneverything365" is certainly a major clue...

So, let's see what happens and where we'll all end up in a year. The whole thing feels like it's going to be a creative journey to the post box every day, and you never know where it's going to take you :)

I am absolutely pumped to take part in this Mail Art adventure. My name is Maria, I am nineteen years old, and I have been making, sending, and receiving mail art for approximately 2 weeks now. My art making process -which involves good background music and a huge pile of magazine / found paper scraps -is still evolving, and I am hoping that Mailart 365 will be a driving force behind motivating me to create better and better works of art every day. Anyway, I mostly work with collage, and since that's right up mail art's alley, it's fun for me to de-stress some days by gluing a few things together to send off to some lucky person. There are examples of my mail art on my blog, but for the time being I'll just show you some non-mail art stuff I have been working on lately (I always have several projects going on at the same time, and I never know how they are going to end)...

And here are some examples of some finished pieces of work:

I think someone posted earlier that they would be keeping track of all of the addresses for this project in a special notebook. That sounds like a great idea! I think I will use that method, too. Also, someone else may have mentioned that they weren't sure where they were going to get addresses to send all of this mail art too. Well, prior to finding this site, I was searching for mail art calls, and I found a few links that may prove useful to people taking part in this project:

If anyone has any other sites they think would be useful, please let me know. I'm excited to see the work everyone produces. Well, I think that's a long enough introduction post, so I'm out. See you in the days ahead!

The art is cool because it is in a traditional koi style but with a macabre twist...Rachael is a mainframe computer person from the Kansas City area who has an obsession with art & a healthy bone fetish...

Rachael has given me permission to tattoo these works - but I have not found a macabre fish recipient yet...

Not sure if I will make the other 3 postcards today, but you never know...I am also not sure who we are gonna mail all this art out to - but i might just send all mine out to random postcrossers.

I have selected a set of small carnets/notebooks in which to keep a record of addresses for this project. I purchased some postage this morning (I'll use these for intercountry mail) and will have my new rubber stamp next Monday. I am really feeling some anticipatory anxiety as we come closer to the start date. Why? I don't know since I make a piece of mail are almost every day. Oh, that's it, the ALMOST! Now I'm committing to EVERY day. How are you feeling? (mim)

I'm not real good with creating off the top of my head. I need a bit of organization. I do have a theme for my 365 creations, but not sure if I will be able stick to it, so preparing might help.

The box contains lots of bits and pieces, sorted into individual and series postcard ideas. It is just plain white cardstock separating the ideas, and I may use that cardstock to sketch out, in pictures or words, what I want the postcard to look like. Just the idea, not the whole thing, so that when I pick up the box to make my daily card, at least I have something to work with, even if I throw it all out the window and go with something completely different.

There are enough ideas in the box to create about 80 postcards, but I'll add to it as I go along. There is a small basket beside the box which has colored cardstock that I often use for background. There's plenty of background to complete the whole year, but I do like to make my own backgrounds, so I have a huge stash of precut postcard that are very heavy cardstock. I rescued that stash from the trash at my former workplace. The cardstock is wicked shiny, so difficult to work with, but I'm getting better with it.

Yep thats Me... Hi( a big wave) to all who will visit this site....I'm Riaand I can be found at : RIA VIEW MIRROR

Hi there. I thought I would take the time to post a friendly intro before the Mailart 365 project begins on December 1st. I am looking forward to participating and view all the wonderful creations during this time.

Not one modern communications marvel can replace a letter. It is more than a communication. It is a gift. A letter can have special powers and so can a piece of artwork. It can be more personal than any telephone call. Think you can't make your words and drawing work on paper? I hope that together we can explore ways to create mail art that will touch the hearts of those who receive them. I know when I first became involved in the mailart movemenet I had trouble getting started but, once started, found I can continue comfortably :)

I look forward to everyday when I can open the mailbox and pulling out wonderful and wild treasures from creative spirits around the globe... and the anticipation that MY creation may provoke a similar reaction across town, across the country or even across the globe keeps me going.

i believe in dreams. i believe in magic. i believe that you are a creative genius and you can create *anything*. and i don’t just believe it about you. i believe it about every single one of us.

10 days to go til the start of Mailart 365, a year long celebration of mailart and already we have a number of great artists artists and a few new faces signed up to take part. I thought I'd write a quick post to introduce some artists that I know.

Postmuse is a prolific postal correspondent and runs the wonderful Orphaned Postcard Project. You'll find Postmuse whereever you find postal people but despite the volume of her output, Postmuse never loses the personal touch. I personally love receiving post from her.

Elena is a much less prolific mailartist, who sends from time to time. She's taken up quilling recently, and wants to let the world know about it through mailart 365. The pieces she makes will be quite unlike any other that you see on the site.

Rejin Leys is a mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her art is very distinctive and a pleasure to receive. I'm really excited to be working with Rejin again, as we have both contributed to a month long mailart project in the past and her work on that was really outstanding.

Mim is one to watch. Based in Richmond, Mim has been involved in mailart for a while. When I started talking about lecturing in mailart, Mim gave me the confidence to do so, and she has sent some awesome collages to my REAL wall in the past. Mim will no doubt be full of surprises.

Perhaps the most mysterious addition to the mailart 365 project for me is L-plate Big Cheese. An economist by training and photographer on the side, L-plate is brand new to mailart. Although she's sent postcards to my REAL wall in the past, I'm intrigued to see what she makes for a year. She's never disappointed in the past, so I'm sure that she'll be great.

Boo Cartledge is a thrilling mailartist to watch. In 2003, Boo wrote a book. Currently, she's ripping it to shreds and making it into mailart. Check out the progress of the deconstruction at her blog and no doubt you may see a piece or two right here shortly.

Katerina Nikoltsou is one of the most active mailartists on the scene at the moment. This Greek mailartist was also responsible for the 2009 Sketbe mailart show in Thessaloniki, which was a really well curated show, featuring just about everyone in the mailart world.

Want to take part? It still not too late! Just send me an email and tell me a bit about yourself!

Mailart 365 - what is it? Mailart is a term which describes a piece of artwork made with the intention of sending it somewhere in the post. 365 is the number of days in a year.

Mailart 365 is a year-long project starting on December 1st, 2010, to make and send a piece of art in the post every day for a year. Artists attempt to make and send 365 pieces in the post, to whoever they please.

On December 1st, 2010 mailart 365 began. What is Mailrt 365? The "Mailart" part is simply a term meaning any artwork that you can produce that you send through the post. The 365 part means that we'll do this every day (or as close as possible) for a whole year.

Want to make mailart? Making it anyway? Join up and lets share the whole experience with the world! Although the official start date was December 1st, 2010 the door will be open for anyone who wants to join any time. Set your own start date and jump right in!

If you want to get involved, just enter your email address (and website and a message if you want to) below and I'll email you back with details of how to join!

PLEASE NOTE - THE NEXT START DATE IS 1st JULY 2013. SIGN UP NOW TO START THEN